Trip To Qijiang 2: Jiaguan Formation Track Site

On to the big adventure! Lida and I arrived in Qijiang in time for dinner and a good night's sleep before heading to the track site the next morning. Despite now having some sense of the local climate and physiography, I was wholly unable to anticipate what the tracksite would be like...or, more specifically, what was entailed in getting to the track site! I think I have been spoiled by relatively easy-to-access sites, like the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, the Warner Valley tracksite, Dinosaur Ridge, and the Copper Ridge track site. So I thought that there was probably some bedding plane exposed, probably at some angle, on one of the hillsides, and we'd either drive right up to it or close enough for a short walk. I will not make that mistake again...!

We went through a small village (that still had some sizable buildings!), but again most people were on foot. We did pass an inordinate number of buses, though -- I wonder if they are part of some sort of mass transit system to get people in and out of urban areas like Qijiang?